Sunday, May 8, 2016

Majority of Russians Can’t Name a Putin Achievement During the Last Year

Paul
Goble

Staunton, May 8 – In what may be the
best measure of both Vladimir Putin’sreal standing with the Russian people and with the impact of his foreign
policy actions intended to boost his standing, 51 percent of Russians say they
find it difficult to name any achievement of the Kremlin leader during the past
year.

In the survey, Russians named Putin’s
military operation in Syria most often as an achievement, but only eight
percent did so. Seven percent mentioned the annexation of Crimea (which actually
happened earlier), and five percent mentioned Putin’s assistance to those who
called in on his “direct line” program (rosbalt.ru/federal/2016/05/07/1512675.html).

At the same time, 42 percent of
those surveyed couldn’t name any Putin action they did not like, but five
percent said they were displeased by Russian assistance to other countries,
four percent complained about the low standard of living in Russia today, and
two percent about price rises. But 35 percent said they liked everything he had
done.

Four percent, the survey found,
blamed Putin for recent changes to the worse in the country and said that any
improvements were not his doing.At the
same time, a quarter of the population – 26 percent – said that both the
positive and negative changes in the country were the result of the Kremlin
leader’s actions.

Putin and his supporters can be
buoyed up by one poll finding: The share of those who say he is responsible for
all the positive things but not the negative has risen from 23 percent in 2013
to 38 percent now.